2K21 - Houston Astros

[Judge Jude]

the buzzers inside their uniforms only got used during road games, I guess
#bangthecanslowly

[madducks]

Marwin Gonzalez kicks off the 2020 Astros Apology Tour:

[madducks]

I am shocked at what a big POS Carlos Beltran turned out to be.

Not only was Carlos Beltran considered a driving force behind the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal, but former teammates also said he refused to change when confronted by Brian McCann.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-sign-stealing

[chancellor]

Desperation shows it's ugly face in many ways.

[Hammer]

How does an owner say it'll ever happen again and also says he shouldnt be held accountable for the past transgressions in the same interview?

[SlideRule]

I enjoyed looking back at the first few posts in this thread - from 2013 - about how bad the Astros were, how ARod was making more than the entire roster, and discussing how Altuve and JD Martinez might have a chance to be decent.

[chancellor]

Brad Peacock is struggling with neck issues. Very unclear whether he'll be ready for the start of the season.

[fuhrdog]

Francis Martes suspended 162 games for a 2nd PED violation...remember when he was a stud pitching prospect. Astros just love being in the news

[cleo]

I saw a story on the local LA TV news last night that a number of LA area Little Leagues and PONY leagues have banned teams in their leagues from picking Astros for their team name this upcoming season.

It will be interesting to see if there is any impact on the Angels home opener against the Astros on April 3. There is buzz in SoCal that Dodger fans are buying tickets just so they can come and boo the Astros. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dodger fans either throwing things at players or running on the field.

[mjl]

Interesting question I saw elsewhere - there have been a bunch of statistical analyses that claim that the cheating didn't actually have much impact on the players' numbers, and so they shouldn't be any different this year. But would you worry that Altuve might get hit ten or twenty times this year and eventually he'll get hurt?

[TS Garp]

Interesting question I saw elsewhere - there have been a bunch of statistical analyses that claim that the cheating didn't actually have much impact on the players' numbers, and so they shouldn't be any different this year. But would you worry that Altuve might get hit ten or twenty times this year and eventually he'll get hurt?

All of the Astros' hitters are being discounted, fairly or not. Hadn't thought about the concern of injury related to getting hit...

[Ken]

Interesting question I saw elsewhere - there have been a bunch of statistical analyses that claim that the cheating didn't actually have much impact on the players' numbers, and so they shouldn't be any different this year. But would you worry that Altuve might get hit ten or twenty times this year and eventually he'll get hurt?

Interesting question. I like it.

There was a scientific paper written a few years ago on baseball injuries, and I'm seeing it referenced in a few different places, so it appears to be the current default for this type information.

That paper looked at baseball data from 2011-2015 and tried to determine the impact of HBP. It looked at both MLB and milb data, but it separated them out to some extent. And it gives us basically all we need (when combined with all the stats from 2011-2015, which I happen to have due to VD drafts)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0363546518773048

From the article we find:

There is a HBP injury every 2554 PA. And as a double check, 1 injury per 9780 pitches thrown.
The average MLB injury due to HBP costs 11.7 "days" missed.

From baseball reference data we can pull that there were 921855 plate appearances from 2011-2015. And there were 7838 HBP in that range.

This produces a total of 361 HBP injuries in the 5 year range.
As a back of the envelope test if we look at pitches thrown in an average mlb season and use the 1 every 9780 pitches stat we come to 372 injures. So the 361 number appears to be reasonable.

Based on the length of a mlb season, there is a game every 1.148 days. So the average HBP injury costs 11.7/1.148 = 10.19 games. So the 361 hbp that occurred cost ~3679 games.

So, taking the 3679 games missed divided by 7838 total hbp comes to .47 games per HBP. Basically, for every 2 HBP you are, on average, losing a game played.

Now, looking back at Altuve, projections have him playing in around 150 games in 2020. Assuming 10 extra HBP due to punitive retribution, he's losing 5 games on average. Assuming 20, he's losing 10. So 1/30th to 1/15th of his value.

So if you had him at ~$30 beforehand, you knock him by a buck or two for the extra HBP risk.

There you go - $28-$29 if you had him at $30 before.

[madducks]

Little League Baseball districts across the country are forbidding the use of the Astros team name because of the cheating scandal.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/us/li...rnd/index.html

Bob Bertoni, the District Administrator for District 16/31 Little League in Pennsylvania, told CNN that he has recommended that all 23 of his district presidents drop the name Astros from their team rosters this year.

Bertoni said he made the decision for two reasons.

"One, we want to protect our players," he said. "We want to protect them from embarrassment or getting ridiculed simply for wearing the team name."

The second reason is they want to use the issue as a teaching tool. Bertoni said that the Astros' actions go against their league pledge, which states, "I will play fair and strive to win."

"When someone does something wrong, there has to be consequences. We want to build our players' characters ... and explain that there are consequences for your actions," Bertoni said.

[mjl]

Interesting question. I like it.

There was a scientific paper written a few years ago on baseball injuries, and I'm seeing it referenced in a few different places, so it appears to be the current default for this type information.

That paper looked at baseball data from 2011-2015 and tried to determine the impact of HBP. It looked at both MLB and milb data, but it separated them out to some extent. And it gives us basically all we need (when combined with all the stats from 2011-2015, which I happen to have due to VD drafts)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0363546518773048

I think the more interesting analysis might be to look at the stat that surgery was required in 3.1% of MLB HBP events. So if he gets hit 20 times in a season, he's 1 - (.969^20) to need surgery at some point, which works out to about 47%. If you include concussions (5% of HBP), and if you assume that there's no overlap between surgery and concussions, at 20 times he's 1 - (.919^20) = about 81% to have a major medical event happen.

I haven't gotten around to looking at the raw data behind the paper but I suspect the standard deviation on that 11-day average is very wide; there's probably a bunch of non-injury HBP and some with very long recovery time. I don't know if you should care that someone is much higher variance than usual though.

[Ken]

I think the more interesting analysis might be to look at the stat that surgery was required in 3.1% of MLB HBP events. So if he gets hit 20 times in a season, he's 1 - (.969^20) to need surgery at some point, which works out to about 47%.

It's 3.1% of injuries not 3.1% of HBP. And injuries occur 4.6% of the time a HBP occurs. So surgery occurs in 0.143% of HBP.
Getting hit 20 times means 1 - (.998572233^20), or about 2.8% chance of surgery.

If you include concussions (5% of HBP), and if you assume that there's no overlap between surgery and concussions, at 20 times he's 1 - (.919^20) = about 81% to have a major medical event happen.

Same deal - 5% of injuries not 5% of HBP. In this case .230% of HBP.
Adding it up as you did and assuming no overlap we come to 7.2% chance of a major medical event, not 81%.

I haven't gotten around to looking at the raw data behind the paper but I suspect the standard deviation on that 11-day average is very wide; there's probably a bunch of non-injury HBP and some with very long recovery time. I don't know if you should care that someone is much higher variance than usual though.

I would agree, it's higher variance, but I believe my discounts applied above were correct.